Sermon text: Acts 8:26-40; Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Philip first appears in Acts 6 as one of the seven men chosen to oversee food distribution in the early Jerusalem church—widely considered the first deacons, selected specifically for being “full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom.” He resurfaces after Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts 7, when persecution scattered believers out of Jerusalem. Rather than retreating, Philip went to Samaria and became the first to preach the gospel outside Israel’s Jewish population—a significant step, given the deep animosity between Jews and Samaritans dating back to the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom centuries earlier.
Category: Acts
Humble Instruction
Sermon text: Acts 18:24-28
This passage introduces Apollos, a Jewish man from Alexandria—at the time the second-greatest city in the Roman Empire, renowned for its library, lighthouse, and university. Described as eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures, Apollos would have been trained in the more vivacious, emotionally expressive rhetorical style typical of Alexandria, distinct from the more reserved delivery favored further north in Greece and Rome. That stylistic difference likely explains some of the factionalism Paul later addresses in 1 Corinthians, where believers had begun aligning themselves with favorite teachers—Paul, Apollos, Peter—based on delivery and personality rather than substance, even though all were preaching the same gospel. Paul himself, by contrast, explicitly rejected relying on polished rhetoric, telling the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 that he came to them in weakness and trembling, deliberately avoiding persuasive human wisdom so that their faith would rest on God’s power rather than eloquence.